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CHAPTER 10. APPRAISING MY OWN PRACTICE: AFRICAN-CENTERED PEDAGOGY IN PREPARING TEACHERS
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CHAPTER 10 APPRAISING MY OWN PRACTICE: AFRICAN-CENTERED PEDAGOGY IN PREPARING TEACHERS Despite the pragmatic realization that knowledge entails lived practices and not just accumulated information , putting into operation educational plans that seriously consider students experiences remains a mysterious assignment for many educators. Indeed, ideas, socially reified, are enormously effective determinants of activity. —Kirshner &Whitson Doing African-centered pedagogy involves research and development into Black culture and history as much as does planning a lesson; it involves critical analysis of standard practice as much as it does culturally responsive practice . The critical part, the working part, of African-centered pedagogy is the appraisal of practice in five critical areas of cultural activity and at three levels of analysis (micro, meso and macro), both of which require a deep read of culture , language, identity and history. As I argued in the introduction of this volume , there are at least two phases for developing a system of successful teaching and learning for African American learners. Phase one is developing responsiveness of the learners in front of us by inviting them into a figured world of inquiry. Our task as teachers in this phase is to create instructional settings that are culturally inviting and intellectually vibrant to all of our students . Phase two is the ongoing work of building the community of inquiry that will contest the hidden barriers and build the supports for learning and achievement. In this chapter, I describe my efforts doing phase two with graduate students. There is an implicit research and development component of Africancentered pedagogy that is no less vital than instructional delivery. There is a critical interrogation of policy and politics that is no less important than lesson planning. The following case description illustrates my own attempt to institute African-centered pedagogy in my graduate class module of African American teachers seeking certification. The course module, called Learning and Teaching, was designed to focus both on pedagogy and the instruction of American history. An additional goal, for reasons I will explain presently, was to provide the teacher participants with a solid grounding in African-centered pedagogy for their own practice. I offer this case illustration to provide concrete examples of the practices and the premises of African-centered pedagogy. CASE FOUR — TEACHER PREPARATION The following description of my experience of teaching a graduate course module to African American teachers is useful for several reasons. First, it offers a good example of the application of African-centered pedagogy — an explanation of how and what you do in practice. It describes the intellectual work and the outcomes for the learning and development for teachers and students alike. According to the framework, the pedagogy of the accomplished teacher is not simply what he or she does in the acts of teaching, but also inheres in the cultural research that the teacher does in anticipation of creating the intellectual , social and spiritual life of the classroom. Second, the analytic reflection on the experience of teaching the course offers a kind of assessment of the African-centered pedagogy as a framework for professional practice. I thought that it would be a strong demonstration of the impact of Africancentered pedagogy if I could show that the African American participants in this alternative program became better teachers of African American children by virtue of having acquired specific culturally situated knowledge and skills for their practice. Third, since the principal instructional aim of the course module was, in essence, to help teachers develop their African-centered pedagogy, it provides an example of the type of community of practice teachers would engage in to recreate connected pedagogy in their schools. The teacher participants in the course module were not merely seeking certification; they wished to become better teachers of their African American children. The pedagogy was something they were hoping to learn given their status as African American teachers in a state system of higher education that made it difficult for them to even complete their certification, much less develop abilities the for greater success in promoting the achievement of African American students. In that regard the goal of the pedagogy, the goal of the course, and the aims of the teacher participants were the same. 156 AFRICAN-CENTERED PEDAGOGY [44.215.110.142] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:21 GMT) The module course on Learning and Teaching provides concrete examples of the abstract components of the African-centered pedagogy, including: 1. What it means to build a community of practice; 2. What it...